1. Field
Example embodiments relate to a magnetic refrigerator and/or a device including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cooling device such as a refrigerator or a freezer is a device for lowering a temperature by repeating cooling cycles of compressing-condensing-expanding-evaporating a coolant, which is performed by increasing a temperature and a pressure of a gas coolant having a low temperature and a low pressure, condensing the coolant having a high temperature and a high pressure by the outside atmosphere, depressurizing the condensed coolant, and evaporating the depressurized coolant under the low pressure to absorb heat. These cooling devices have limits from an environmental viewpoint because the cooling devices use a gas coolant imparting huge greenhouse effects.
Accordingly, research is actively performed to exclude gas coolants so as to provide an environmentally-friendly and also highly efficient cooling device. One of these approaches involves a magnetic refrigerator having a magnetic material and a permanent magnet.
The magnetic refrigerator is cooled using magnetocaloric effects, which involves heating or cooling by changing a spin arrangement of a magnetic material according to a magnetic field. Cooling using magnetocaloric effects has drawn attention as a new cooling method for accomplishing the environmentally-friendly, quiet, and highly efficient performance.
An active magnetic regenerator is one kind of the magnetic refrigerator, and research on applying the active magnetic regenerator at room temperature has been performed.